I'm getting cracks in the bows and holders

[Prince Manic]

I'm really mad at how these things can crack on their own without me using them I've got cracked 1x1x2 bows and a holder that cracked and another completly broken, how these pieces are breakin' if I store completed models in my clear storage box? is it the humidty within' my room or what? Just got a new crack on the drivers side from my Ecto-1 and it's one of those small bows and another of those holders cracked at the side.

HAS THE QUALITY WENT DOWN THE DRAIN??? - How I can tell them about this using their Replacement brick service so it doesn't happen again?

[naf]

I don't know what you mean by "bows" can you post a picture? i know some people have had issues with cheese slopes, headlight bricks, and some clips breaking, but I don't think it's very widespread. Outside of a few headlight bricks from 30 years ago, I don't have anything that's broken just by sitting there.

[Prince Manic]

I don't know what you mean by "bows" can you post a picture? i know some people have had issues with cheese slopes, headlight bricks, and some clips breaking, but I don't think it's very widespread. Outside of a few headlight bricks from 30 years ago, I don't have anything that's broken just by sitting there.

- this piece but the smaller version of that

Edited June 28, 2014 by Prince Manic

[tkatt]

I've had several pieces in the Chima legends beasts sets that cracked along the bottom edges. The parts included the bricks with bows, the new 1x2 plates with teeth, and some of the 1x2 plates. I was pretty surprised as this had never happened to me before with 100+ sets. I ordered replacements for them. I received almost everything but I was shorted a few of the pieces.

I could try to post some photos of the bad parts if anyone is interested.

[naf]

If these are brand new sets with broken pieces Lego will send you free replacements, just call customer service or send a message through the website.

[Prince Manic]

If these are brand new sets with broken pieces Lego will send you free replacements, just call customer service or send a message through the website.

Didn't knew that XD I'll do that later when I have the time I have used the Original 1x1 vertical holders way before lego redesigned them, on the newer one they slightly bend a bit making a stress point on them.

[Wodanis]

I've had several pieces in the Chima legends beasts sets that cracked along the bottom edges. The parts included the bricks with bows, the new 1x2 plates with teeth, and some of the 1x2 plates. I was pretty surprised as this had never happened to me before with 100+ sets. I ordered replacements for them. I received almost everything but I was shorted a few of the pieces.

I could try to post some photos of the bad parts if anyone is interested.

Yes please do as I would be interested in seeing how they broke. Ordinarily Lego pieces do not break. It depends though, it could have been part of a bad batch that got through. Speaking of parts anyone else notice how Red bricks seem to be more translucent lately than they should be?

[tkatt]

I found the best light over my stovetop- so please ignore the dirty background. But I think I managed to get good pictures of the cracked pieces. All of these cracks formed within a week of building the sets. I didn't notice them when I was building. I had them on a shelf after building them, they were never played with. I had planned to get more of the sets because I wanted to use some of the new teeth parts as architectural details on a MOC. As I was looking at the sets trying to decide which to get more of I noticed all the cracks that had formed. I also have the Lion and the Gorilla, neither one of them seems to have any bad parts.

Hairline crack in the olive cheese slope, I've heard of this happening so I wasn't shocked to see it

Here you can see the 1x2 olive plate and the tan plate with the teeth have cracks on the sides

The plates on the other front leg are also cracked

And on the back leg

Cracked cheese slope, cracked profile brick, cracked 1x2 slope

The profile brick is cracked on both sides, you can faintly see the crack in the 1x2 slope here as well

Cracks in the teeth plate and the 1x2 next to it, and that 1x2 slope

Another shot of the slope and that 1x2

Here you can see the teeth plates with cracks and the 1x2's

These are the worst, they've pretty much lost thier clutch power- they don't hold that 1x3 plate very well, If I was a kid playing with this it would be falling apart all the time

[splatman]

If you have not already, you should definitely tell LEGO about this. Do send URLs for those pix, too. They need to see this.

[tkatt]

If you have not already, you should definitely tell LEGO about this. Do send URLs for those pix, too. They need to see this.

Lego sent me the replacement parts. I've not gotten around to rebuilding the sets with the new parts yet. I didn't realize I could send them pictures. When I was requesting new pieces I just described what was wrong. I wonder if it would still be of intrest to them to see pictures of the bad parts?

[antp]

It could be useful to report it one way or another with photos, these are quite impressive. Maybe via an ambassador here on the forum ?

[naf]

I wonder if this is bad batch of plastic or something? As you found out, Lego has very good customer service and will replace the parts. I remember when I was little, my mom would call up Lego to replace parts I chewed (for some reason I like gnawing on the the hose pieces and the classic space helmets), and they replaced those for free even though I was the one who destroyed them.

[Faefrost]

That is a lot of cracking? More than I have ever seen across several hundred thousand pieces? Is there anything else going on there? I'm guessing those Legends Beasts all come out of the same factory.

[Wodanis]

I would definitely call Lego Customer Service and follow up with them about this. It clearly came from the same point in origin. I've never seen that much cracking on lego parts in one set. Clearly there is a quality control issue and TLG takes these issues very seriously. Emails tend to get lost in the shuffle so call their 1-800 number. It's on the TLG website.

[tkatt]

I would definitely call Lego Customer Service and follow up with them about this. It clearly came from the same point in origin. I've never seen that much cracking on lego parts in one set. Clearly there is a quality control issue and TLG takes these issues very seriously. Emails tend to get lost in the shuffle so call their 1-800 number. It's on the TLG website.

Lego has been notified.

A had five of the plates with 3 teeth crack, but only 1 was sent.

Thanks to this thread I'm finally emailing Lego to try and get 4 more.

[Wodanis]

Good to know. Isn't nice to get new parts in the mail. :)

[VintageLegoEra]

OHHH BOY...these cracks are terrible!!!!

i don't think this is due to humidity cos ( In my country Which is very Hot and has high Humidity % ), i have a set from 1996 and was stored for 17 years and when i get it out , no single crack was there beside minor discoloration of white bricks.

These are clearly a manufacture defect....

Hope you recover these parts Soon

Regards

Edited July 2, 2014 by VintageLegoEra

[Prince Manic]

I found the best light over my stovetop- so please ignore the dirty background. But I think I managed to get good pictures of the cracked pieces. All of these cracks formed within a week of building the sets. I didn't notice them when I was building. I had them on a shelf after building them, they were never played with. I had planned to get more of the sets because I wanted to use some of the new teeth parts as architectural details on a MOC. As I was looking at the sets trying to decide which to get more of I noticed all the cracks that had formed. I also have the Lion and the Gorilla, neither one of them seems to have any bad parts.

your 1x1 roof slopes from the flat ends I get cracks on the slope ends and most are cracking to a point that it's gonna break completely off! - lucky I waited like about 3 minutes to do the replacement pieces service to get 4 1x1 vertical holders 3 in white and one in gold.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Superkalle
Removed pics from quote!

[Cara]

Recently I've have a couple of cheese slopes that have cracked in half - shame none of them are yellow that I might actually MOC on a minifigure's plate for fun ;) and one dark brown palisade brick. But those photos are the worst I've ever seen especially all from one set. If I had bought that set from a LEGO store I'ld be returning it. That many in those small sets, I would definitely send the photos to LEGO too to prove that many pieces really were breaking.

[Timoonn]

Welcome to reality, Lego's are now massive shit in terms of quality.

[TheLegoDr]

^I hate to second this, but it seems to be coming true. In an average set I have that is how the pieces look. Lego only seems to replace so many and then they give you the run around. At least that is my experience.

And even if they do send replacement parts, that doesn't fix the problem. It's just a crutch.

They problem is, I mostly buy minifigures and a lot of them are cracked.

[naf]

I wonder if this has something to do with the environment you guys are in, perhaps humidity or lack thereof is causing this. Any extreme temperature shifts? My new sets are from 2011 to present, and I haven't experienced a single broken or cracked piece anywhere. Like I said, the only broken pieces I have are from 30 years ago.

[L@go]

I'm with naf here. I absolutely believe that this is a genuine problem for you, and the pictures provide perfectly good evidence, so I'm not denying that this is happening, I'm just absolutely baffled that some people tend to encounter extreme quality issues while I, in my pre-dark age years and so far in my AFOL age (about six years as of now) have yet to had a single brick crack on me from anything else than rough play.

At the Eurobricks Event in Billund in May there was a presentation by Erland Refling Nielsen, who is a LEGO parts designer - and a Eurobricks member. He mentioned that a part of their job as parts designers is also to test different types of plastics, and expose bricks to various chemicals. Apparently there are certain kinds of chemicals that, when applied to LEGO bricks, tend to make them much more brittle. So if somebody were to, say, not wash their hands between handling products that contain these chemicals and building with LEGO, that might have an effect on the bricks. I can not remember what kind of chemicals they were, or even if Erland mentioned any specific ones, but I suspect that this, and maybe also environmental issues, like naf suggests, might have something to do with the problems you encounter.

[Faefrost]

I'm almost wondering did a factory screw up a flame retardant additive in a plastic batch? I can't imagine anyone would have run a set like this through a UV sterilizer, which would be one of the only other ways I can think of something like that being so widespread?

[mechamike]

Erland mentioned that ordinarily butter is a "chemical" that makes bricks more brittle, and there was discussions that people press to hard on the bricks when you put them together. But I have had cracked 1x1 plates and cheesslopes right out of the box from Lego, never assembled (by me at least) but still cracked, I found parts like this in the minecraft set and also in the legendary beast set.(not to the extent above) Perhaps the boxes has been stored in shipping in a to hot enviroment? I dont know.

I also had a lot of brick that cracked the first time you put them together , (even so gently), So Lego seems to have something wrong in the line, may it be in the material or afterwards.